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Kailash Parbat: A Peek into Indian Street Food

I once read an article that started with "Indian Street food is generally sold in the streets of India." I don't know if I can write such brilliant, insightful words, but let me try!

Kailash Parbat does a good job of filling a niche in the culinary landscape in Singapore.A quintessential part of the Indian platter is a mouth-watering array of street foods which are often missing in the culinary scene outside India. One such street-food that will make any Indian swoon and sigh deep sighs of nostalgia is 'chaat.' And it is in making 'chaat', in my humble opinion, that Kailash Parbat knocks the competition out of the ball-park.

Chaat (sighh) is a generic name for a savory snack which can have a varied base: boiled potato (aloo chaat), or chickpea (chhole chaat), or fried potato cutlet (aloo tikki chaat), or puffed rice (bhelpuri), or crispy fried dough crackers (papri chaat) etc. But what creates the magic is the garnishing sauce. The base is topped with yoghurt, a mint chutney, a sweet tamarind sauce, chopped onions and cilantro to create an explosion of colors and flavors that will make you want to break out into a Bollywood jig and sing devotional hymns to the 33 million Indian Gods (I kid you not, we have that many!) Though some other Indian restaurants also serve chaat, Kailash Parbat gets the sweet, tangy and spicy flavors in the right balance.

Another street-food item that Kailash Parbat excels in is the Chhole Bhature (puffed bread with spicy chickpeas). This dish is immensely popular in Northern India. However, it would be travesty to call Chhole Bhature a snack because it is as heavy as having a roti prata meal.

If you are in the Little India neighborhood and you want a snack that is not too heavy but intensely flavorful, hop into Kailash Parbat and try the chaat. And if you feel like having lunch, ignore the Biryani for once and try the Chhole Bhature. And yes, please send me a thank you card.

The other dishes that I have tried in Kailash Parbat are standard fare, similar to other Indian restaurants and nothing to write home about. One distinctive feature of this restaurant is that it serves Sindhi food which is a regional food of the Sindhi community. But truth be told, after jostling around in Mustafa, all I want to do is pat myself on my back and reward myself with a big platter of chaat. The air-conditioning, the quick service and the fact that its right across the street from Mustafa helps. Kailash Parbat is a 55 year old popular restaurant chain in India and it has hygiene, service and logistics well in place.

If you see an Indian girl unabashedly doing a Bollywood number at the Mustafa crossing, you can safely assume its me- high on my chaat platter at Kailash Parbat. Sigh.